Archive for June, 2007

I thought this post might be helpful for anyone googling how to make their old AT&T phone work with Cingular. This is not guaranteed to work, and even though I was able to achieve it, it isn’t 100%, there are flaws! P.S. I have no idea why this works, and maybe it only works with my phones, but you can try!

I currently have a Samsung X427 on Cingular. It is nearly identical to the Samsung X426 I had with AT&T but I really really love the X426. It rings louder, there are more ringtones, and it is lighter. Plus it isn’t covered in scratches like the X427 that I bought off of Craigslist when my piece of crap Motorola that Cingular gave me died.

Last night I was cleaning out one of my cupboards and came across my old phone. I haven’t been able to let go of it, even though I have stuck my Cingular SIM card in it hundreds of times, hoping one day it would work. Nope, it always just says “wrong sim card”. Well I decided to try, just one last time before throwing it out. I was amazed and delighted when it worked. I was so excited until I turned the phone off, turned it back on, and I got that horrible “wrong sim card” message. “But it worked before!” I cried. I had even checked my voicemail, placed a call, and changed my ringtone. Bastards!

So I turned the phone on and off a hundred times, praying it would work again. It wouldn’t. I was sad and determined because it DID WORK. I have now (so far) perfected a method.

Insert AT&T SIM Card into the AT&T phone and turn the phone on.

Wait for it to finish searching, until it says “emergency calls only” – this will only work if you have an old AT&T Sim card that is no longer active, i.e. you have no service with AT&T.

With phone ON, plug it into the charger (I don’t know if you have to do this but I did).

Remove Cingular SIM Card from your Cingular Phone, and have it close-by.

Ok, this is the tricky part and you have to be quick! I mean really quick! Remove the battery from your AT&T Phone, remove AT&T card, replace with Cingular Card, replace battery. (The trick is to do this fast enough that your phone does not shut off).

If you were quick enough, the phone should still be on and you will see a message that says “Please Wait”. If you were not quick enough, the phone has shut off.

For me, if the phone did not shut off, it will say “Please Wait”, then it searches, then it synchs up with Cingular. If the phone did shut off and I have to turn it back on, it says “wrong card”.

As I said, this technique worked for me. It tricked the phone by switching cards really fast. I have no clue why this works, but the phone seemingly works perfect, I can access my voicemail, make calls, send text messages, etc. However, when I shut the phone off, and turn it back on it does not synch back up to Cingular. Basically I can never shut my phone off again, the battery can never die, or I must carry the AT&T card with me at all times just in case, and use that method described above. Works for me, I never shut my phone off or let it die. In the case that it must be restarted, I can easily carry the AT&T card around with me.

Yay. Maybe this will help someone. And if anyone who is knowlegable about cell phones cares to explain why this strange method works, please feel free to comment and enlighten me! I am somewhat confused, but happy! Only one weird thing seems to happen. Each time I have done this, after a few minutes a “message sent” notification shows up on my phone. I can’t find anything in my text-messages outbox, so I have no idea what it is sending a message to. I just hope it isn’t sending off some old text messages I had saved when I last used this phone. So if you happen to get some odd text message from me, I probably meant to send it to you in like 2005. Yeah.

On Friday night Bryan and I went to see “Knocked Up”. I have to admit, it made me laugh – A LOT. Go see if it you are in the mood for something mindless to watch, and you feel like you haven’t really laughed in a while. I did enjoy it a lot.

On Saturday we got up as early as we possibly could force ourselves to and went off to the superstore of America to buy some chairs in bags. I found two pretty little red ones, but Bryan insisted on buying a bigger one for himself. He said he needed a chair with arms. Who needs arms? And for $4.87 a chair, I’m not going to get picky about whether my chair has arms or not. I loved the ones I bought, they were so compact and I could hike for miles with one of them strapped on my shoulder without even breaking a sweat. After our awesome chair purchases, we headed out to enjoy some airplanes in the sky. We went to the Wings Over Pittsburgh show in Moon Township and it was amazing! It wasn’t absolutely the most amazing thing in the world, but it was pretty freaking cool. I got to see a bunch of airplanes do neat things, and if anyone knows me, you know what happens when you are with me and I see an airplane in the sky. Bryan makes fun of me, calling me a country girl that acts like she’s never seen an airplane before. There is just something about seeing those huge things in the sky that just makes me stop and gawk and stare. Sometimes I jump up and point when I see them. I’ve seen planes before and I’ve even been on one before, but there is just something about watching them. Where I grew up, we saw airplanes but they were so far away up in the sky. It is awesome to just sit outside at Bryan’s house and watch the airplanes. He lives close-ish to the airport, we are near their range of descent, and sometimes they just look like they’ll land right in the bush over yonder. I love to sit outside and be able to say, “Oh look, that one is US Airways, or FedEx, or Delta”. And I love the purple airplanes! I think they might be Jet Blue but I’m not 100% sure. You’d think that Jet Blue would have BLUE airplanes, but then I insist that Bryan’s car is purple and he insists that it is blue. I will settle with violet, but he still gets mad when I call it purple. I tried to argue it in front of his parents once, and I think they agreed it was violet. I think we should all take a poll ….. what color is Bryan’s car! If you vote with me, I will give you candy.

So Saturday ended up being a very busy and tiring day. We both ended up looking like lobsters after spending the day watching airplanes with the sun beating directly on us. After the airplane show we went to Sam’s Club to pick up some household supplies, then we headed to Giant Eagle and Shop ‘n Save to buy stuff we needed for dinner. We ended up making shish-kabobs and corn on the cob on the grill, and potato salad. For dessert, we walked down to the ice-cream shop that has the most delicious ice-cream ever! After that we came back, and watched “Ghost Rider” but I wasn’t able to stay awake until the end. I didn’t really like the movie that much, and I woke up and Bryan filled me in on the last half hour. I was glad I fell asleep, the ending sucked.

On Sunday, I think I did absolutely nothing. We slept in and I washed some dishes. Bryan did laundry and I laid around like a dead person. Then we watched “Short Circuit 2” and I love Johnny 5! The ending nearly brought tears to my eyes. Who knew a robot could make me um almost cry. Then there was the part where they were trying to hack Johnny 5 into pieces and I was running around the house and hiding in the kitchen because I didn’t want to watch that part. I had never seen it before and I thought he was going to die! So sad, but the movie had a happy ending. Last weekend was about the same, we grilled hamburgers one day and drank Zimas and Smirnoff Ice. It was so tasty! And we checked out the Arts Festival last Sunday but it was so crowded as usual so thus not really that enjoyable.

The countdown to vacation is on! One month and ten days and we’ll be on the sunny beach, sipping some tasty drinks, basking in the sun, riding in carriages, taking boat rides, and doing whatever else Bryan puts on the agenda, but it is vacation and woooo!

And after all that fun is over it will soon be time to move in with my wonderful and amazing boyfriend so I can start driving him crazy every single day forever (or until he kills me)! Just kidding – Bryan loves me very very much ;-). You want to know something amazing – he has never once yelled at me or even risen his voice. He never gets mad at me even when I act like a child or do stupid things– he just shakes his head and says that I’m lucky he loves me already. I like not fighting and being happy. We have now been dating for one year and like five months. Sometimes it is hard to remember what life was like before we met. I am one very special and lucky gal. Yippie 😉